San Francisco in the seventies: an explosion of activism leads to an incredibly free lifestyle, compared to many other cities in the US. This allows, for example, for the election of an openly-gay person to hold public office for the first time (Harvey Milk). However, the idyllic scene disappears at the beginning of the eighties with the ferocious spreading of AIDS, which in turn causes another wave of activism to remember the lost ones and to urgently release the funds necessary for scientific research.

With this deep look at the advent of and devastation caused by AIDS in San Francisco, David Weissman offers us an amazing and shocking testimony of those who 'were here', and of those helpless and aghast families who watched in slow motion as the terrifying pandemic devoured their loved ones. This is an important piece of work for a new generation who perhaps are not so aware of the magnitude and speed of the disaster, or of the importance of a community in overcoming a tragedy.